A Traveller in an Antique Land
30 Jan 2020LongDistanceClara
//Have been a bit "piccie heavy" in these last couple of logs and have a sneaky suspicion that if I try and plop this entry in with the previous two weeks of the expedition, it's going to start struggling to load them at a decent rate. SO - new log! Thanks to Cmdrs Ren Solsen for tagging along on the "Fat Planet" landing and to Sir Jumpnick for his cocktail mastery once again! Only one more week to go after this one on the "NYND Expedition" and it has been great fun so far so thanks again for the invite!The chonky planet mentioned in here is Kyloall CL-Y G1518 D 1 if anyone fancies; there are numerous vids out there on how to land on high-g planets but just to demystify them a bit, they're like tons of stuff in Elite - not at all tricky or scary so long as you know how to do them! If you find yourself in the area, give it a go - if a lemming like me can land on one without shields, then so can anyone!
And I apologise if Clara goes a bit off the rails in this one, chalk it up to space crazy and a B of a week at work!
Also - had a couple of msgs asking who the heck are Lauren, Coral and Yan that I keep banging on about; they're part of the motley crew I've assembled in my ramblings over time and if you want a brief precis of them, you can see it here.And now - gibberish!
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Have to admit - liiittle bit 'emotional' right now.
Not for any bad reason! I think I'm just tired, or quite possibly a teeny tiny bit stoned - through no fault of my own, I'm blaming Lauren for this one! Either way, I'm currently sat on the capacious floor of my dear Beluga's bridge, cup of tea in hand and feeling a little funny. I can hear all the laughter and singing and yes, numerous breakages of glassware up in the observation lounge/bar-conversion that is the Tipsy Whale. The sounds even carry all the way down here in the cockpit; but it's all fuzzy, remote, muted - not just by distance but by something else...
Anyway catching up:
We made good time at the beginning of the week and ended up dropping into the system designated for the Expedition's next mass jump in the Lagoon Nebula nice and early. We even had time to rendezvous planetside with some of the guys on the trip, where the ad-hoc parking lot looked a bit weird - honking great exploration ships clustered around a rather nifty little Sidewinder, a bit like a bunch of curious dogs checking out a little buddy!
"Personal space!"
The usual planetside antics ensued - "land the srv on the sidey", canyon running and at one point I very nearly spat my coffee across the windscreen as an SRV scuttled across the Beluga's expansive canopy like a nosy mechanical spider! All really good fun and yet another reminder why the odd expedition is a very nice change from being an anti-social hermit of an explorer from time to time!
Pretty soon it was time to scuffle over to the nearby Herschel system and start congregating for the mass jump. The fleet was looking good as usual and hadn't actually suffered much from the attrition of a couple of weeks out in space, with a good number of people still along for the ride! I will admit to being a tiny bit nervous as we lined up, noting that the gorgeously gargantuan Gutamaya beastie of Cmdr Jeros' cutter was lined up square behind the Ylva, glowing ominously - and would probably get a little 'personal' and boop me into FTL if I wasn't quick enough off the launch!
A 500m/s cutter also known as "Incentive"
Fortunately, everything went off without a hitch and we joined the rest of the fleet snapping away into Witchspace. Settling back into the chair, I pottered on, taking the Ylva through the various lovely POIs that had been picked out along the way and as the evening drew to a close, rolling into dock at Medusa's Rock out in the Crescent Sector, where I had to do a little stocktaking.
See, unfooortunately, I had cooked my cargo hatch to a crisp. In my defence, I never need it while off out exploring usually! Heat damage to modules is no drama when exploring - it happens rarely and when it does, it's a quick fix. Since I never need the hatch, I typically ignore it. Anyway - thanks to all that first week scuttling around to make my "milestones", coupled with a fairly blasé attitude to the Beluga's toastiness, I MAY have melted the cargo hatch down to slag and as a consequence, some precious bar supplies had gone to increasing the alcohol content of a star or two along the way.
Bugger.
SO! We're going to need to replace the bits that "leaked". One of which was the fricking Jacques still. But it's a really good bit of kit so there's no getting around that - we're going to have to nip out to Colonia for the second time on this expedition to pick up a replacement! HOWEVER - all was not lost; there'd been a bit of chat on the Expedition comms about high-gravity worlds and it just so happened that the current record holder (that I knew of anyway) was just a couple of k north of Colonia. Two birds one stone!
We locked down tight for the night in a hangar on the asteroid station and settled in for a comfy night's sleep, ready for the trip up to Bubble 2.0 tomorrow.
Big whale in a tiny tank!
An early start, a hasty bit of breakfast and it was skids up and out the door! I set course for Colonia and we settled in for the cruise. Thankfully, after a couple of weeks and a good solid 150kylies under the belt, the Beluga was feeling very "natural" indeed - optimum scoop tanking and heat management all kinda becoming second nature, such that I could disengage brain and just flit through the jumps. Pretty soon we were pulling in to Colonia proper; a quick pitstop at good old Coeus system, our springboard to the north of Colonia, then off out to our date with Captain Chunky - aka an 11-g behemoth of a planet.
Perspective is a hard thing to grasp sometimes in space, but this huge chunky monkey of a rock just growing more and more massive as we approached somehow radiated the words "BIG & HONKING". It was simply enormous and as I brought the Ylva down into her gravity well, we immediately started to feel the pull. Even way out here, far above the orbital glide path, we were starting to experience several g.
I don't honestly know why I thought this was a good idea but as we cruised down on our glide, I toggled through the ship's systems and shut our shields off completely. There's a fairly simple knack to landing on high-gravity planets, but still, doing it without a shield in a light unengineered hull is a little 'clenchy'.
The problem is, I've felt for a long time now too - safe, I guess? I don't get that little frisson of excitement and adrenalin any more while out exploring, I haven't in so long; but as soon as I flipped our shields off, I got the faintest little spark of that feeling I used to have- and must admit it felt good.A lot of tortured creaking of metal from the shuddering superstructre later, ear-splitting wails of protest from our straining thrusters and after a little careful jockeying with our very picky landing gear, I finally put her down on the surface, with just a couple of percent hull damage. And immediately regretted the hell out of coming because it's simply GREAT fun feeling 11 times your Earth bodyweight! Coming from Capitol, I'm used to slightly higher grav; but even so, holy crap! The only person apparently enjoying themselves was Cmdr Ren Solsen, who'd joined us via telepresence and while the rest of us were getting pummeled into our seats, his holo flickered cheerfully, taking in the vast plains around us - so huge there was next to no curvature out to the horizon.
Pancake city! Thanks for the company to Cmdr Ren Solsen!
Ok, that'll do before I pass out and we end up becoming a very flat cautionary tale! Thrusters firing, gently coaxing her up into the sky, aaaand never have I been more happy to drop 'down the rabbit hole' into Witchspace. I could almost feel my spine decompressing. We said a quick goodbye to Cmdr Ren, scuffled over to Colonia, docked up at Jacques' and bought another Quinentian still. And while the guys tied it down securely in the hold, in honour of our little jaunt up to that honking great planet, I jotted down a new addition to the menu that seemed singularly apt;
Ren's Apple Pancakes A stack of freshly made pancakes, layered in between with lightly caramelized thin apple slices. These famous 'Eden Apples' impart their silver hue to the pancakes giving them a bright, silver lustre making for both a delicious and unique breakfast. Lightly dusted with LTT Hyper Sweet to kickstart your day! |
Time to get trucking! So long Jacques, nose towards the bubble and off we go. Despite being the second trip in as many weeks, it flew by and we pulled back in to Jameson Memorial in Shinrata later that evening, quickly settling down for an early night. We had the better part of 70 tons of rares to restock the next day and experience from our 'shopping run' just prior to the expedition told us that tomorrow would be a very long day in the saddle, covering millions upon millions of light seconds of supercruise!
So much so that the next morning, I took pity on Coral, Yan and Lauren and tiptoed out early while their cabins resonated to the sound of snoring sleepy spacers.
I made my way over to Hera, my smuggly little Phantom, buckled in, brought her alive and headed off to shop. For hours. And hours. And then some more hours. And dear god, make it stop...VERY late that evening, I plopped her back down on the pad in Jameson's docks, staggered over to the Beluga, waved the crew in the rough direction of the Phantom and the supplies awaiting transfer to the Ylva - and then cratered into bed. It shouldn't be that tiring just sitting still in supercruise for hours but honestly, somehow it's more exhausting than dragging your butt around the galaxy! I don't think I poured myself out of bed until mid-morning the following day. The guys had done a great job moving all the stores onto the Ylva and my Phantom now sat there radiating innocence.
OK, done! 70 odd tons of cargo back on board, all present and accounted for. Now for the love of all things, DONT cook the cargo hatch this time! I'd also thrown in a thousand litres of "Waters of Shintara" - I don't believe in all that guff necessarily but what the hell, might find a use for it! I very carefully took the Ylva out of dock as discreetly as possible - which is pretty hard to do in a fricking great Beluga jammed full of what the more straight-laced stuffy jurisdictions call 'contraband'!
No scans, all fine. Good space whale! I know I have a tendency to go on about my ships and anthropomorphize the hell out of them, but this big old beastie really is pretty. Even a few days ago when I'd bumped into another Expeditioneer, Cmdr Stormysan, and she'd been drifting alongside his little Sidewinder, both ships had looked fairly gorgeous skimming along the exclusion zone of a star;
Little and Large
Love her to bits.
We drifted back into Medusa's Rock just a few days after leaving. Quite a few of the expedition fleet were in the area, poking around, finding all sorts of gorgeous knick knacks and I didn't really fancy twiddling my thumbs in dock for a few days either, so after a quick stretch of the legs, I fired up the Ylva, took her out, pointed her straight 'up' - and started climbing up out of the plane.
And something really fun happened - we found a chain of neutrons that just kept propelling her higher - and higher - and higher and oh crap is it possible to get vertigo like this!
It was genuinely peculiar. I've poked around the top of the plane many, many times in all sorts of craft; but our big old girl of a luxury liner had at best about 41ly jump range, thanks to her cargo, her cabins and the various other crazy I'd packed in her. And yet here we were, leap-frogging up the plane and with every jump, the vast expanse of the galaxy spreading out further and further below.It was more than a little surreal, cruising up this high so easily with such an incongruous beastie until finally we had to take a small fuelling stop in a rather funky little waystation of a system - the last scoopable in range of our "ladder". While there, I called the rest of the crew together to double check my navplots because frankly I was getting a little tired and a bit weirded out by this funny little ladder of stars we'd found! Some rapid scribbling and 'napkin maths' and it looked like we would actually be able to climb right up to a neutron sitting literally on the roof of the plane, with not a single system above us - and in theory at least, make it back to this fuel stop before we ran out of gas!
Onwards! And for the first time in a long time, I really started to feel that buzz again. That glorious, slightly scary sense of going into the unknown, climbing up those branches not sure if they'll bear your weight and just pushing yourself, further and further. And when we finally reached the top of the ladder, end of the road - mixed metaphor central, I know, whatever you want to call it! - and looked down on the galaxy glowing softly, a sea of stars spinning gently below us with literally nothing overhead, not one single star, just dark, intergalactic void - don't mind admitting, I had a bit of a lump in my throat.
Roof of the galaxy
Go with me on this, there's a point in here somewhere!
I am as flawed a human being as the next one. I'll freely hold my hand up to that! And one of those flaws is a total inability to shrug off stupidity - I mean real stupidity; bigotry, conceit, presumption ugh - all that crap. When someone in a bar or something starts twittering on like they're the smartest person in the room when in point of fact they're barely the smartest person in their own head - I wish I could just shrug all that off but I can't and it really annoys me! I try and get a bit better every day at ignoring them and honestly, I fail most of the time - but at least I'm trying I guess.And things like this view before us help. Because when you see sights like this spread out below you, the sheer inconceivable beauty and scope of the Universe? All those things become so unbelievably petty and childish. It means simply nothing. Take our civilizations for example; in our eyes at least, they grow into mighty, powerful empires. And so we war on each other for greed and gain, we boast and brag, divide into smaller factions - and do it all over again. Others try and climb on top of pillars in their own little universes and yell at the top of their voices "Look at me! Notice me! Look at how knoweldgeable and skilled and wonderful I am!" - and all the while the galaxy serenly spins on. It doesn't know, doesn't care about our puerile little bickering and posturing, it just IS - and will be long after the human race crumbles to dust. I've always loved that wonderfully ironic line by Shelley: "Look upon my works ye mighty and despair!" - that's so many of us in a nutshell. Only in our case, rather than on a pedestal in a desert, it will be engraved on the tiniest spec of dust, drifting in the universe, lost in the sea of ten thousand billion billion stars.
Or as Lauren would say to some members of humankind in her far more poetic way; "Get over yourselves, asshats; you suck"
Anyway, we sat out there in the dark for a long time, fairly hypnotized by the soft glow of a hundred billion stars spinning below. Even better, fleet comms had some beautiful music playing and it really was quite moving, sitting up there all snug. Sadly though we were snapped out of our reveries by the sudden realisation that despite powering down all possible systems, we were slowly eating into our fuel reserves!
We reluctantly started back down the "neutron ladder" and with each jump got a little more nervous until we arrived in the penultimate system, a neutron from which we would have to jump to our scoopable "waystation" system. One problem - we arrived in the neutron system and as I glanced down at the readouts, the fuel gauge read empty. As in literally nothing, nada, not the tiniest hint of a pixel. And we still had a 20-odd light year jump to make! I speculatively tried to fire a high wake up but nope - "INSUFFICIENT FUEL".
Ok, dont panic, just cross literally every finger and toe! We dived down the neutron tail, supercharged up and whispered various prayers as I triggered the FSD, hoping the fumes in the reservoir would be enough to haul us just one more time - and thank god, she fired.
I have never been so relieved to hear that hum as the FSD spooled up and dropped us into Witchspace. Although as glorious sounds go, that "THUNK" as the fuel scoop started greedily vacuuming the coronasphere of our pitstop's primary after we dropped into system wasn't too bad either! A nice fat, full tank later and we scuffled around the system, sniffing around - and to be fair it was a very pretty system, sporting all sorts of goodies. My favourite, however, was a lovely dwarf star with an enormous secondary ring extending far out into space, with three little "shepherd" planets having cleared a gap with their orbit between the inner and outer. Fun!
A little jaunt down to a nearby planet and we parked up next to some geysers for a drive around. Tipping the scales a little over 2g it wasn't exactly a cakewalk but this was gravity I was more used to, certainly more so than 11g!
Tangerine mist!
Still a little awestruck and buzzing from our peculiar foray to the top of the plane, I brought the SRV back on board, we dusted off and hopped back down to Medusa's Rock. The bar in the station left a lot to be desired, so for the most part, the various explorers in need of a drink or two have been dropping in on the Tipsy Whale, parked up in a hanger here at the asteroid base. We've even had another offering from our Cocktail Connoisseur, Sir Jumpnick:
Nosce Te Ipsum 3 parts Burnham Bile Distillate* 1 part Centauri Mega Gin 1 part Saxon Podensac Lillet *Now the tricky part here is that to TRULY make this one right you need to visit a Burnham distilling ship, let them use the extraction process on you, and have them make a custom distillation that you can use in the cocktail! Once you've got that, just combine the ingredients, dry shake for however many seconds you feel like, and pour into a chilled cocktail glass garnished with a lemon twist. ***Results may vary per person |
Thanks again Jumpnick!
"Result may vary per person" - I love that. What he doesn't mention is that these "results" can include crippling existential dread, split personalities and an overwhelming feeling that your brains are outside your head. Still, it tastes really nice.
So yep, it's been pretty lively up in the bar. Which, don't get me wrong, is lovely! But I've been a bit - thoughtful I guess, this week. My compulsion to shut off my shields as we shuddered down to that honking great planet, that little perspective moment up on the roof of the galaxy - I was having thoughts and feelings that didn't really belong in a lively, noisy bar. So I quietly made a cup of tea from the ceremonial Heike stuff we had brought with us (I do love good green tea!) and at Lauren's urging, sprinkled a little Tarach spice on top.
I don't think anyone noticed me sneaking off downstairs, along the various corridors onto the bridge. I've left the lights off and am just sat kneeling here looking out of the huge cockpit canopy, through the mailslot to the stars beyond. And maybe it's the spice, or the tiredness or something, I don't know - but I suddenly don't want to be here.
I want to be alone, out there, in the void between the arms, tiptoeing along the rim, as far from 'civilisation' as I can possibly be. It's a cliché but I really feel like something is almost physically pulling me, tugging gently, wanting to lead me quietly to the dark places in the galaxy to be alone and at peace. It's a bit like being homesick or lovestruck - no that's not right, it's really hard to describe but I feel it in my stomach; it's both lovely and relaxing and yet suddenly unbearably urgent - all at once. I've had this feeling only once before and it was a a little over two years ago, deep inside a Thargoid structure, gazing in wonder at that holographic map.
This feeling is much like that; just this sense that I'm not where I'm supposed to be - that there's a place somewhere far out there, in a quiet dark corner of this galaxy or the next, far away from mankind where I can set everything aside and find a little peace. I simply can't describe it. I don't know. I'm sure it'll pass; but the bit that's worrying me, enough that I daren't mention it to my closest friends, not even Coral - is that part of me doesn't want this feeling to go. It's almost seductive, a deep, yearning feeling and I really think that one day, when I listen too closely to it - I think one day I'll go and never come back.
But not today. I'm going to sit here a little longer, although I better lay off the tea for a bit, before heading upstairs. Take care all you explorers, wherever you are out there.
